Follow @theurbancountry on Twitter Find us on Facebook Subscribe to theurbancountry.com via e-mail Subscribe to theurbancountry.com via RSS
Follow @theurbancountry on Twitter Find us on Facebook Subscribe to theurbancountry.com via e-mail Subscribe to theurbancountry.com via RSS

5th gear at 20K

The next topic that has irked me since arriving in China is the way people drive with manual transmission. I don’t know why this is but 98% of drivers that I’ve come across seem to shift gears around 1000RPM.

It’s not uncommon for a taxi driver to be driving 40KM/hour in 5th gear. I’ve even seen drivers doing 20KM per hour in 5th gear which to me makes no sense. It’s very common for a car to be on the verge of stalling almost all the time. This style of gear shifting was less prevalent when I visited Beijing, but it still exists there. I can’t understand why they are driving their cars like this.

Normally you would shift gears anywhere between 2500-4000RPM, not at 1000RPM. Maybe it’s a result of the high gas prices, but I doubt this style of shifting helps with gas mileage.

I found an article on CarSpace.com that explains how to drive a manual transmission. They recommend shifting at 3000RPM, so it’s not just me.

PS: The Urban Country is blocked (censored) in China (Likely due to some of my past posts), so although I can post articles on here, I can’t preview them, so I hope everything looks good from the outside.

gear_lever

Leave a Reply